The Hands of Christ

In Sara Miles' wonderful book Take This Bread she talks about the practice of anointing hands at her church St. Gregory. That act of consecration and blessing really struck me and I used it last week at Freedom Fellowship in preparation for Pentecost Sunday.

I started by reading Genesis 2.7:

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 

I noted how the body of Adam had to be filled with the breath/spirit of God to become a living being. In the same way, I argued, the church--the body of Christ on earth--needed to be filled, like Adam was, with the breath/spirit of God. And that's what happened on Pentecost. The body of believers was filled with God's breath and became Christ's living, spirit-filled body on earth.

And if that is so, the message of Pentecost is that we are Christ's body on earth. Christ's hands and Christ's feet and Christ's eyes.

So I called the people forward with this prayer from St. Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours.

At the front we presented our palms to Mary and Darrell for the anointing.

A touch of oil, the sign of the cross made in your left palm. The words.

"In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

A touch of oil, the sign of the cross made in your right palm. The words.

"May you be the hands of Christ in the world."